Be my Magical Girl

Edit: (March 17, 2012) I'm back, much later than I expected. I still need a few days though. Everyone has been really patient, even though I keep pushing the date back.

DT1 has an update. 1.0.2.7 fixes some issues that people may have been having when loading up the game as well as saving due to this loading issue. The game now loads the external resources in before the title screen appears. If you can start the game and save with no issues, skip the update.

My roommate got me a joking V-Day card that says "Happy Valentine's Day" on the top and "Be my Magical Girl" on the bottom. With a pink background, pink hearts, and a weird anime cat thingy...

So anyway, I'll be out of town on Monday - Wednesday. I'm going to guess that I'll have the demo done by next weekend. If so, it's 'only' a month later than I predicted way back. Not too bad I guess, considering it was a slightly random guess. (Plus a bit of me knowing how fast I get things done for DT.)

A Humorous Question
This has been asked on more occasions than one would think... I guess... or not considering how many times this has been asked.
The question being, "Will there be any pony references in DT3?". I'm guessing this is due to my random outbursts to the show on this blog. The answer, good for some, and bad for the rest, is yes and no. There are no ponies or anything like that, there ARE however, a few subtle things. The arrow at the bottom-right of dialogue boxes that signifies that you need to press the confirm key to continue, animates through the colors of Rainbow Dash's tail and mane. The dialogue box colors, or at least the primary color, are also based on the same thing. Jerry still has green for him, Claire has purple, etc. That's as far as any pony references will go. The whole friendship thing between Jerry and Jeremy was in the first game already, which was finished before I even heard about the show. Any 'magic of friendship' lines are purely coincidental.

There's a few things I'd like to say about the demo, but I'll wait till the day it is released so it's all fresh in everyone's mind at the time.

Anyway, I'm gonna get back to it. After I finish this last thing, I'll be polishing up a few things before it is released. Sound... may wait. There's sound in it, but it's about as much as the first game had.

March Madness

Edit: (March 9, 2012) 2/3 tasks completed. Almost there.

Edit: (March 3, 2012) 1/3 tasks completed.

Spar... So we're getting very very close to the demo. There are 3 tasks left to do. None of which are TOO taxing. March 10th??? Shh, I didn't announce a date. I'm never going to reach that. This week isn't going to allow me much time to work on DT. Then again, strange things have happened before. I definitely didn't expect Gate 3 to take so long to make, but you'll all see why.

I'm hesitant to release too many screenshots right now, as I don't want to give away too many scenarios. I do want to allude to a few things, hmm...
Here's one, take note that this is not on the main story path, this is optional. This map in particular drove my testers nuts.

No dashing for this entire level.

I'll try to reach that date, but I'm not going to rush it. I've seen what happens when I try to rush things out, and unfortunately, so have some of you. Luckily I've never accidentally divided by zero... yet.

Happy Cupid's Arrow Day

Edit: (February 25, 2012) DT1 got a small patch to fix a few small issues I was seeing in the LPs going on. The Agility skill was locked out if you had the skill 'Iron Body Lv 3', this update fixes that issue. The explosion tunnel in Distortion 1 wasn't changed on any technical level, however, the short cutscene that plays out before it starts only occurs once now. Once you reach the point the cutscene initiated, the sequence skips the cutscene.

Edit: (February 23, 2012) A quick announcement. It's Slaix's birthday today! You will all now throw many many gifts at him! Also you will all worship him for the remainder of the day... which doesn't have much time left now. So we'll make up for that by extending the time of reverence to this time tomorrow! So yeah, just gonna take this moment to thank Slaix again for all his help with this project, your feedback has made this project so much better.
Here's your birthday ca... cupcake!

Kind of a spur of the moment post. March is going to have me a bit more busy than February, but most of the demo will be complete by then and I'm not really going to have THAT much time taken from my usual DT time.

Gate 3 has 7 different areas of various sizes, 5 are completely done, and #6 will be done by tomorrow. The last stretch is fairly short and focused. That part should only take me a few days, and the encounter at the end... depends. Boss fights I can never tell. Like the one I just finished a few days ago, I'm trying new things with him, which will most likely boost the debugging time. New ideas = more possible mistakes = more time.

I also figured out a really odd thing that GM does with script local variables. Never ever give one the same name as an object local variable. It'll override the object's version and remove itself from memory, even if the block of code using the script local copy isn't read at run time. It confused the heck out of me when I was getting an error that the variable wasn't known. This however, creates ways of removing variables from memory when you don't need them anymore. It still doesn't allow you to remove global variables from memory though, I tested. Also if you keep up with the Game Maker Blog, any time they have the suggestions open, suggest a marquee selection tool for the map editor for moving tiles and objects around. I've been trying to get them to put that in for so long, but I think more people need to voice it. It would be incredibly helpful. Also an option for copy-pasting instances in the map editor. For when you've got a set of objects with instance creation code. Sure, we can use a for-loop to mass produce, but argh, GM is also a visual editor, it needs more in that department.

Once this gate level is done, it's time for sound! (Dang it, I haven't finished/polished any of the optional gate levels.)

Moving Along

Did everyone see the Valenti... err Hearts and Hooves Day episode? You know what I'm talking about...

Okay, Gate 3 is almost done, just finished with a huge thing. This thing took awhile to get working, I haven't done anything like this animation-wise ever in 2D. And definitely not coding. It was a request by a new tester and one other person. It's a boss fight that replaced the Frankenstein monster. (I kept saying Werewolf for awhile.) I thought about showing what it was, but I'll just keep it a surprise. I'd probably just gush about the boring technical aspects behind it anyway.

So moving along, Gate 3 has 1 area left to make. Well... more like 1.33 areas left to make, plus I gotta finish coding the final encounter there. But that's it! Then a demo! (Plus the last bit of fine-tuning and tweaking.)

A few weeks left! Also no screenshots this time. Oh yeah, it snowed about 1 hour north from me! It's too damn cold!

And I'm Back

Edit: (February 2, 2012) DT1 was updated today. Nothing crucial, just a lot of minor changes/fixes that I had been making over the last month and a half.
- A lot of the spells and abilities had their costs changed slightly, mostly the Element cost went down for them. A few had their Spirit cost reduced slightly. Of these, can you guess which one was DEFINITELY changed again? That infamous spell that I'm sure hardly anyone uses that always gets changes made to it. It's Water Barrier of course. It had its Element cost reduced drastically.
- The Demon Cursor boss had its App Create ability pushed back a bit. They don't get quite as large as they used to, but it would take a good eye to see the difference.
- Ultimate Phalanx had his guard time reduced quite a bit. On the 2 hard settings, he was guarding so much that it was more an annoyance than anything.
- The biggest change was to the 45 degree slopes. I know everyone has seen how Jerry just runs right off of them instead of sticking to them as he runs down. While testing one of the new areas in DT3, Slaix said that I should really fix how slopes are handled. So... I did. ONE LINE OF CODE FIXED IT! So I went back and changed that for DT1 as well. The character now sticks to the 45 degree slopes when running down them. Which means you can run and jump off of them instead of flying off and not having access to your jump.

Been back for a few days really, but the title seemed... anyway I've gotten a lot done the last few days. If I can keep up this momentum, maybe... MAYBE we'll see a late February demo release. But I'm still thinking it'll be delayed, I'd like to polish up a lot of things. Sound effects are a major thing I need to get on. Music is always thought of with the theme of the area, so music is never on the back burner. But sound has always come last for DT, sometimes to the point where it gets neglected, as I'm sure you guys picked up on in DT1 and 2. I'd really like to fix that for DT3. Its already got more sound feedback than the other two games, but it still isn't anywhere near what I want it to be in that regard.

While the extra Gate levels aren't very long, I'd like to have the first two playable for the demo, as that'll also give some foreshadowing speculation for you guys on what those build up to later on.

Man, finally an update that isn't somewhat dramatic and not really about the game. Hooray! Also a screenshot!

Hooray, a knife motion trail!

Yeah, that's a rope holding something. Useful gimmick for annoying the balls out of players with puzzles. :P

Ouch, Delay

Edit: (January 25, 2011) Okay, I'm not dying anymore. Just a light lingering cough, which I'll have for the next 2 weeks or so. I'm not really sure what I had, could have been pneumonia, or not. Whatever it was, went for the lungs. Anyway, back into the normal swing of things! :3

Edit: (January 21, 2011) Feeling so much better today. For the past 2 days, all the symptoms have been gone... except for one. That cough, and it started getting worse. It wasn't till yesterday afternoon that it eased up. It's there, but not too too bad today. Though I still dread when I go lay down to sleep, that's when the coughing gets crazy. Now it just hurts A LOT every time I cough. I coughed so much the last few days (especially nights) that the muscles in my sides are incredibly sore. It's not a pleasant experience when a cough occurs right now.

I've been sick for awhile with something bad for the last 5 days and I'm probably going to have this till at least Monday, there's just no getting out of this one quick.

I just can't focus at all with this. I managed to make an add-on to the map system one day that should have only taken 30 minutes, but I just stared at the screen most of the time and it took me closer to 3 hours. Most of that was me laying down and just moving my laptop away.

So anyway, I'm not just working on the game at all, I was hoping to code the boss that I knew would take quite a bit of debugging to get working properly, but I just can't focus. I don't see any way I'll have the content I want in the demo by the middle of February at this point.

Post Title Here

Winter has finally settled in central Texas. Oh winter, you are a bane on my existence. If only winter wasn't so cold, I wouldn't dislike it so much. Though to me, 50F is cold.

Yay, a large portion of Gate3 has been finished! Now on to the next part, which isn't quite a big. The finale of Gate 3 is almost ready.

I think the hardest part of these earlier parts of DT3 is making sure to keep the difficulty low. A few troublesome moments have slipped into these earlier levels, but the overall feel needs to be somewhat calm for the majority of it, up to the middle of Gate 3 at least. Plot wise, I want to keep things fairly mellow during these times as well.

At least there are the optional levels that open up after the associated gate is completed. :P (I can already see the hate mail generated from these levels.)

That's it for now. Here are two screenshots I used elsewhere.

The skill tree was changed a bit.

Colored numbers and stuff.